Back in January I asked a question at a conference about CoPs and web2.0
“How are we going to hold the more fragile communities together when some of the key contributors may be increasingly tempted to publish their ideas mainly on their own blogs to the detriment of the overall level of interaction?”
Since then, there has been a discussion on ACTKM mailing list mostly entitled “Blogs vs Forums” which has thrown up some possible answers, for example the suggestion that forum discussions go deeper and last longer, whereas blog conversations (where they happen at all), tend to fizzle out quite quickly.
You have to be careful though, not to imagine that it’s in the comments attached to blog posts that conversations will normally take place. The comments area may look like forums, but they are not, and the real conversation taking place in the blogosphere tends to happen between blogs, typically with one blogger writing a post which picks up and develops an idea referencing what another blogger posted earlier on their own blog, and so on.
In such a way, possible blogging ”communities” bound together by hyperlinks, RSS, trackbacks, pings tags and searches may arise deliberately or spontaneously in a more or less decentralised fashion.
Jack Vinson certainly entertains the idea of blogging and communities
But are these bloggers, standing as they do somewhat aloof from the forums which they may also take part in, helping to draw in wider participation from the general web, through their high ranking in the search engines and engagement with wider communities, or are they drawing energy and ideas away from forums, diluting the special power of many-to-many asynchronous dialogue?
It is perhaps at the boundaries where the two worlds (blogs and forums) meet that interesting things are happening and future trends may perhaps be spotted.
Andy Roberts is a writer who initiated DARnet. Contact me on aroberts@gmail.com or @aroberts on twitter
Surely, though, there is an argument that it’s harder to hold communities together when they are spread over a number of seperate weblogs than when they’re in a single hosted environment. RSS, trackback, CoComment and the like are all useful tools, but within a specialised online community, nothing can beat the immediecy and connected-ness of forums and similar.
Of course, blogs and forums can work together. Sites like Livejournal, Warwick Blogs and to some extent MySpace all have personal blogs, but with a single sign-in that makes it easy to see replies to your comments and new postings, build friends lists and communicate much more immedietly.
I think the answer to the question of which system works best depends on what the communities do and are for. For simply writing and reading about a general topic, weblogs allow more direct ownership of the platform and greater individualisation. For communities focused on specific tasks, or of people who need to work closely together, the more hosted communities might better facilititate the more immediete need for communication.